"A small business person has Uncle Sam as a partner, a partner who puts up no money, does no work, and wants 30 or 40 percent" – Irwin Schiff

"All taxes discourage something. Why not discourage bad things like pollution rather than good things like working?" – Lawrence Summers

"The power to tax involves the power to destroy" – Chief Justice John Marshall

"Count the day won, when the earth, turning on its axis, imposes no additional taxes" – F. P. Adams

"The upper class keeps all of the money and pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class." – George Carlin

Print neatly. That’s the kind of advice that the IRS considers a “dynamite” tax tip. If you ask them a real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they’re useless.”

– Dave Barry

"The current tax system is defended by no one. I don’t believe it can be fixed. We must tear the income tax out by its roots so that it can never grow back" – Bill Archer

"Country is run by… financial powers & corporate interests [who] send their lawyers to Congress to make laws so that they don’t have to pay taxes" – Gore Vidal

"Tens of billions … are going into the pockets of tens of thousands of tax preparers who … love complexity as much as the rest of us hate it" – Nicholas Von Hoffman

"Death, taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them" – Margaret Mitchell

"In america, there are two tax systems: one for the informed and one for the uninformed. Both are legal" – Learned Hand

"Pay your taxes. Al Capone didn’t get busted for all the murders… Like Heidi Fleiss, he was convicted for tax evasion" – Catherine La Croix

"The cost of taxpayer compliance with [the tax code] is over $80 billion per year, more than eight times the cost of the IRS budget" — Charles Rossotti

"The blame for the maddening complications of the federal tax system goes to the people with the most money" – Nicholas Von Hoffman

A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right— Malcolm St. Pier

"Intaxication: euphoria at getting a refund from the IRS, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with" – Greg Oetjen

"[The Internal Revenue Code is] about 10 times the size of the Bible and, unlike the Bible, contains no good news" – Don Nickles

"If the IRS took 100 taxpayers at random and sent each an incorrect notice that they owed an extra $92.35 in taxes and interest, more than two-thirds would probably just send in a check without investigating further" — G. Guttman

"I love America, but I can’t spend the whole year here. I can’t afford the taxes" — Mick Jagger

"I told the Inland Revenue I didn’t owe them a penny because I lived near the seaside" — Ken Dodd

"Day in and day out, your tax accountant can make or lose you more money than any single person in your life, with the possible exception of your kids" — Harvey Mackay

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax

– Albert Einstein

"I wouldn’t mind paying taxes… if I knew they were going to a friendly country" — Dick Gregory

"The purpose of a tax cut is to leave more money where it belongs: in the hands of the working men and working women who earned it in the first place" — Robert Dole

"I like to pay taxes. It is purchasing civilization" — Oliver Wendell Holmes

"I guess I think of lotteries as a tax on the mathematically challenged" — Roger Jones

"The taxpayer: that’s someone who works for the federal government, but doesn’t have to take a civil service examination" — Ronald Reagan

"And to you taxpayers out there, let me say this: Make sure you file your tax return on time! And remember that, even though income taxes can be a ‘pain in the neck,’ the folks at the IRS are regular people just like you, except that they can destroy your life" — Dave Barry

“The United States has a system of taxation by confession” — Hugo Black

Few of us ever test our powers of deduction, except when filling out an income tax form

– Laurence J. Peter

“Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

“When there’s a single thief, it’s robbery. When there are a thousand thieves, it’s taxation” — Vanya Cohen

“If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don’t get wet you can keep” — Will Rogers

“Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others” — Oscar Wilde

“The term ‘tax humor’ is no doubt an oxymoron to many people; to the more cynical, it is an apt description of the entire tax code” — John F. Iekel

“Earlier today, the White House released President Bush’s tax return. Not surprisingly, under dependents, the president listed Iraq” — Conan O’Brien

“[A tax loophole is] something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform” — Russell B. Long

Worried about an IRS audit? Avoid what’s called a red flag. That’s something the IRS always looks for. For example, say you have some money left in your bank account after paying taxes. That’s a red flag — Jay Leno

“Taxation: how the sheep are shorn” – Edward Abbey

“The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale” — Arthur C. Clarke

"The difference between death and taxes is death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets" — Will Rogers

"The most important ways in which I think the Internet will affect the big issue is that it will make it more difficult for government to collect taxes" — Milton Friedman

"Congress can raise taxes because it can persuade a sizable fraction of the populace that somebody else will pay" — Milton Friedman

"How is the government going to get the extra taxes? Out of the rich, or just out of the poor, as usual?" — Will Rogers

Income taxes have made more liars out of the American people than golf

– Will Rogers

"The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward" – John Maynard Keynes

"Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands" — Judge Learned Hand

"Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery" — Calvin Coolidge

"No matter what anyone may say about making the rich and the corporations pay taxes, in the end they come out of the people who toil" — Calvin Coolidge

"Tax reform is taking the taxes off things that have been taxed in the past and putting taxes on things that haven’t been taxed before" — Art Buchwald

"Short term, the most important thing is to put people back to work … If they’re working, that means they’re paying taxes, that means that they’re buying goods and services – and the economy, instead of being on a downward spiral, starts back up on an upward spiral." — Barack Obama

"I think that we’ve had an economy that’s been out of balance for too long. So the general principle of raising taxes on higher income Americans, like myself, and providing relief to those who haven’t benefited as much from this new global economy, I think is a sound one." — Barack Obama

"I will eliminate capital-gains taxes for the small businesses and the startups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow" — Barack Obama

I’m proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is — I could be just as proud for half the money– Arthur Godfrey

"The politicians don’t just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are dependent and helpless. When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both" — James Dale Davidson

"Tax deductible, That’s what you are: Tax deductible. Just like my car, like a gift to local charity, you give my 1040 clarity" — Steven Zelin, the singing CPA to the tune of Nat King Cole’s "Unforgettable"

"If the Lord loveth a cheerful giver, how he must hate the taxpayer!" — John Andrew Holmes

"It’s income tax time again, Americans: time to gather up those receipts, get out those tax forms, sharpen up that pencil, and stab yourself in the aorta." — Dave Barry

"Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today." — Herman Wouk

America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation

– Dr. Laurence J. Peter

"You know, gentlemen, that I do not owe any personal income tax. But nevertheless, I send a small check, now and then, to the Internal Revenue Service out of the kindness of my heart." — David Rockefeller

"Thinking is one thing no one has ever been able to tax." — Charles F. Kettering

"The rich hire lawyers and accountants for a reason – to pass the tax bill on to you." — George W. Bush

"The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it’s just sort of a tired feeling." — Paula Poundstone

"War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes." — Thomas Paine